53 pages • 1 hour read
Kristin HannahOn Mystic Lake
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Importance of Communication
Throughout the novel, communication is shown to be both unifying and healing. This can be seen both through the characters who do not communicate well and through those who do. Throughout the novel, Izzy has the most literal communication problems, because she becomes physically unable to talk after the trauma of losing her mother to suicide and her father to alcohol addiction and despair. Doctors have told her that talking about her mother will help her to get over her mother’s death, but because this is something she does not want to do, she stops talking entirely. The doctor understands that communication can be healing, but Izzy will not take part in that healing process if it means she might lose her mother even more than she already has. Nick, likewise, does not communicate much with his daughter while he is still recovering from Kathy’s death because he is so focused on his own pain that he cannot help his daughter with hers. This detachment further separates him from his daughter. Likewise, although for entirely different reasons, Blake is unable to communicate well with his daughter, Natalie. This is because they do not have much of a relationship to begin with. He always relied on Annie to tell him what to do with Natalie, and when Annie no longer acts as a mediator, the father-daughter relationship deteriorates even further. In all three of these cases, a failure to communicate leads to either a lack of healing or a deterioration of a relationship—or both at once. In no case in the novel is a lack of communication shown to be a positive thing.
The healing power of communication is primarily shown through Annie’s ability to draw Izzy and Nick back into the world. When she comes to them, she speaks constantly. She does this in order to relieve them of the pressure of having to speak. This helps bring life into the household, and it also helps Izzy learn to trust Annie. One Izzy trusts Annie, she slowly begins to speak, and this is a big part of her journey toward healing. This progress is only possible because Annie bridges the communication gaps with her own words. When Nick and Izzy do not feel the imperative to speak, Annie’s words help to heal them.
Communication is also shown to be important through the healing Nick receives through his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He does not speak when he first starts going to meetings. He just listens. But from his first day, he hears stories of other people like him, and this helps him to feel less alone. Knowing that there are others who struggle in the same way is a big part of his ability to overcome his addiction to alcohol. Eventually he becomes comfortable enough to tell his own story, and this demonstrates how far he has advanced through AA. When the novel opens, many of the characters are suffering from wounded relationships. As some of the characters struggle to feel better by withdrawing into themselves, this only serves to push their loved ones away and cause more pain. When communication is instigated, often by Annie, relationships are healed and people are brought back together.
The Bonds Between Friends and Family
Above all else, Hannah’s novel focuses on the bonds that unite people and the ways in which those bonds can both heal and destroy. Even the most problematic bonds described in the novel cannot be broken completely, and this dynamic is demonstrated in the shifting relationship between Blake and Annie. The two have been married for two decades when Blake tells Annie that he has been having an affair with another woman for almost a year. She tells him that she will learn to forgive him, but when she realizes that he does not want her forgiveness and has no intention of changing or improving their relationship, she is devastated to realize how little he values their marriage. He has broken what she has worked so hard to build, and the family means so much to her that she still tries to make things work for a while before she finally accepts their inevitable separation and divorce.
Despite this betrayal, when Nick asks Annie if she still loves Blake, she tells Nick that she will always have love for Blake because he is her family. There is a subtle but important distinction between “having love” for someone and “being in love with” someone. She is not in love with Blake anymore. By contrast, familial connections cannot be broken, at least in Annie’s estimation. She realizes that time has given her and Blake a bond that cannot be broken even by betrayal. Furthermore, when Nick and Annie tell Natalie that they are getting a divorce, they tell her that they will always be a family and that that bond cannot be broken. Natalie’s father has hurt her many times and failed her in many ways, and even after her parents’ divorce, she still makes plans with him in the future. The bond of love remains even when people repeatedly fail each other and cannot stay together.
The ability for bonds to endure is also shown through Annie’s relationship with Nick. Annie, Nick, and Kathy were best friends when they were younger, and Annie and Nick had feelings for each other just as Nick and Kathy did. Annie started to back away from the relationship when Kathy and Nick got engaged, but when she comes back to Mystic many years later, she quickly resumes her friendship with Nick. The love that was there in their past has never gone away, and it slowly morphs into a deeper kind of love than they had when they were younger. In this relationship, time and other families have kept them separated, but their love and bond remain, and Hannah hints that the relationship is destined to deepen much further after the close of the novel’s last chapter. This dynamic shows that the love between friends can be just as enduring as that between family members.
The Futility of Trying to Change People
One of Nick’s primary points of distress in the novel is his apparent inability to help people who do not want to be helped. The first person Nick tried unsuccessfully to help was his mother. He cared for her even though she grew to hate him. Then he chose to marry Kathy, in no small measure because she needed him. He understood that she suffered from depression and needed someone to be strong. He tried to be this person for her, but once she stopped taking her medication for her psychiatric condition, he was not able to save her from dying by suicide. In a very similar way, he tries to save Sally from her abusive husband. He comes to her home when help is called, and he tries to convince her to press charges against her husband. He understands that she will likely die at her husband’s hands if she does not press charges, and this is ultimately what happens. After this loss, he stops believing in his ability to help people. He believes that helping people is impossible, at least for him, and as such, he falls into despair and stops trying.
Similarly, Annie tried to help Blake throughout their marriage, but all she was able to help him with was the maintenance of their external life. He did not want help being a better person, and as such, he never became a better person. When Annie arrives in Mystic, however, Nick does want to change. He has inflicted further trauma on his daughter because of his inability to overcome his own, and he has chosen to hide in alcohol addiction so that he does not have to face the world. He takes advantage of the women who watch Izzy for him, but when Annie tells him that he must heal himself and be a better father to Izzy, he takes some time and is able to overcome his demons. Annie and her words are able to help him because he wants help. Similarly, Annie is able to help Izzy because she, too, wants help. At first, she clings to the idea of disappearing because she is afraid of leaving her mother behind. Ultimately, Annie’s patience and love open the girl up, and when Nick becomes more available for his daughter, both he and Annie are able to help her heal even more. This is only because Izzy has given up on her mother returning and wants to find peace and healing. Through all of these examples, Hannah advances the thesis that people can only be helped when they want help.
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